Streamline Publishing

Before Kevin Macpherson picks up a brush, he looks. Really looks.

“Look for something red,” the New Mexico oil painter tells his workshop students. “The next day, look up. The day after that, look down. Challenge the way you see. Force yourself to view the world around you in a new, unfamiliar way.”

“Perugia” (watercolor, 11 x 14 in...

In an era of endless new tools, techniques, and trends, Donald Demers paints with a wooden stick with some animal hairs on the end of it. That’s how he describes it, anyway — and the simplicity is entirely intentional.

“I like to keep it simple so I’m not distracted by tools,” says the Maine-based maritime and landscape painter, whose plein air work is widely regarded ...

William Lathrop and Daniel Garber, two classic Pennsylvania Impressionists, captured the spirit of spring in two different paintings in 1916. There’s something equally inspiring in each of them, but the differences between them can teach as much or more.

Both of these paintings live in the Philadelphia Academy of Art.

William Lathrop...

Thomas W. Schaller doesn’t have much patience for creative blocks. Or comparison traps. Or waiting for inspiration to strike. The celebrated watercolorist has spent decades thinking about what separates artists who grow from those who stall — and he’s come up with three truths worth pinning above your easel.

“Piazza della Rotunda — Rome” (...

“Why do artists do it?” asks painter Russell Jewel. “Why do we bare our souls to the public and risk one person’s opinion?” His words capture the tension every artist feels when entering a juried event — the balance between vulnerability and ambition. But what makes a painting rise above the rest? What qualities make a viewer stop, linger, and fall in love? We turned to some ...